TGIF 196

Most Fridays I send an email to my team here at Microsoft, usually about the week that was, some of the communications learnings we have had, or where we are going. Sometimes I share these on LinkedIn as well... this was TGIF 196, about growth, through the lens of Roland Deschain. Also known as the gunslinger. :)

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“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed” is one of my favorite first lines in fiction. It sets a tone, it starts a story, it is ambiguous and intriguing. Who is the hero and who is the villain? Better read on…

Decades ago, I was standing in a used book store on Capital Hill in Seattle. I was visiting my brother and needed a book to read on the flight back East, and this being before ebooks and Kindle and all, I needed a physical book. I was sort of broke, so used books it was. It was unusually shaped– a larger than normal paperback, with some interesting illustrations, so I picked it up and read that first sentence, then the second, then bought the book, then had to come back for a different book to read on the flight because I had finished Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” that night. For many years, that first somewhat slim book was the only book about Roland of Gilead (the aforementioned gunslinger), but apparently Roland got a hold of King and pretty much compelled him to write what King now calls his magnum opus. (He actually said that Roland kicked down his door, grabbed him by the throat and forced him to write more. ??)

The book centers on Roland, the last of the gunslingers in a world that has “moved on” and left him and his kind behind. His final act is seeking revenge against those he holds responsible for this moving on, the last honorable gunslinger in a world where honor seems lost. In the series, Roland is portrayed as solid, steady, not a blazer but a plodder. We are introduced to him as someone who knows who he is and will not change. His stubbornness is a virtue.

This is not a TGIF about the series. Feel free to read it however (set aside some time, eight novels and nearly 5,000 pages await), but you might skip the movie, which was not all that good, and making a movie with Idris Elba in it that is not good takes some work. ?? While there are many themes to this book, in the end I think it is about the tension between the new and the old, between moving on and staying put, between arguing with change and changing.

I was thinking about Roland the other day, and about how the world does move on, and how people react to this movement. In my time in the communications industry, change has been constant. The same is true of our beloved technology industry – and it feels like the pace is increasing, the world moving faster than ever. Some people move with it, some don’t. In my career, I’ve seen some incredibly talented people rise and grow, and then for some reason stop – seeing change but determined to resist, they stop moving, and as the world stays in motion, they slip and fall, vanish from relevancy. There are companies like this as well – they know who they are, they hold fast to the vision they have, the world changes, and poof they are gone.

It is easy sometimes to celebrate the notion of resistance to change. Someone or some company knows who they are. They see the world as an attack on that knowledge and resist to the bitter end. These are tragic heroes and villains of literature and popular culture. The closest analog to my friend Roland is Dirty Harry and Clint Eastwood, the actor who plays him. In the movie, Harry lives by his own rules, his own sense of justice where the justice system seems skewed. The line “Do you feel lucky” followed by vigilante action never failed to draw cheers. In “Unforgiven” Eastwood plays another character, dark and bleak, seeking this time to change, and perhaps failing. And in “Gran Torino” Eastwood again plays a character in stasis at a time of change, up until he changes and grows, in tragic and heroic ways. From that movie, the tribal old person yell of “get off my lawn” is popularized. ??

Our growth mindset at Microsoft pushes us to change with and ahead of the world, no easy task. Because after all, we know things, especially about ourselves and the company we represent. And knowing, that is easy, and does not require too much work. Consider music. A study from Spotify says that people stop listening to and enjoying new music when they are 33. For many years, this was true for me as well – I digitized all my CDs, I listened to the music I liked, I bought new music by Bob Dylan, and well that was about it. At some point though I realized that music had moved on and just maybe I should move with it. Through technology and my kids, I found new music, and the world for me is richer because of it – moving on turns out to be pretty good.

All stasis is not bad, and all movement not good, of course. Having a core set of values as we do at Microsoft, ones that allows us to flex and adapt while still knowing who we are is a good way to go. From a communications standpoint, the same is true – understanding the concept that influencers are simply people or organizations who publish at scale – allows us to embrace new influencers as they arise, regardless of their publishing medium, and it keeps us free to use existing strategies and tactics, modify those, come up with new ones, and still feel like we are true to where we started.

Too often, change and acceptance or resistance to it is couched as “old versus new.” Look at tech – the easiest stories to publish are the brash new kids challenging the establishment, while the establishment fights back. Ditto for politics, and sports, and so on. As with any idea, there is an element of truth here – experience easily leads to knowing what to do, and unchecked knowing can lead to not wanting to do anything differently. This is where we need to push ourselves, as individuals and as a company. Some of us have been in our roles a long time, some are new. We have product and service lines that are decades old, and others that are brand new. Our success depends on us all showing the flexibility to move with and ahead of the world, to grow and try new things, to explore and stretch our minds and bodies in different ways, even knowing that this growth can be hard – and while recognizing that sometimes what we are doing RIGHT NOW is still the best way. The challenge is to keep in motion, again with and ahead of the world.

And Roland? Despite himself, he learns. He grows. He changes. Does he move on? No spoilers here. ??

TGIF! It’s Labor Day weekend here, in the US, the traditional end of summer holiday. In my garden, I’ve moved on from basil and planted a winter crop of lettuces and kales, and I’m defending my tomato crop from a variety of critters who appear to be more willing to eat them while they’re green than I am. I’ve got plans for next year though to get ahead of this!

fxs